United States | News & Politics

ST. JAMES, La. — For a little while, it seemed like Cancer Alley would finally get justice.

The infamous 85-mile stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is one of the nation’s most polluted corners; residents here have spent decades fighting for clean air and water. That fight escalated in 2022, when local environmental justice groups filed complaints with the Environmental Protection Agency, alleging that the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality had engaged in racial discrimination under the Civil Rights Act. In a watershed moment, the EPA opened a civil rights investigation into Louisiana’s permitting practices.

But just when the EPA appeared poised to force the LDEQ to make meaningful changesOpens in a new tab, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry — now the state’s governor — sued. Landry’s suit challenges a key piece of the agency’s regulatory authority: the disparate impact standard, which says that policies that cause disproportionate harm to people of color are in violation of the Civil Rights Act. This enables the EPA to argue that it’s discriminatory for state agencies to keep greenlighting contaminating facilities in communities of color already overburdened by pollution — such as in Cancer Alley — even if official policies do not announce discrimination as their intent.

Five weeks after Landry filed his suit, the EPA dropped its investigation, effectively leaving Cancer Alley residents to continue the struggle on their own.

“It was devastating,” recalled Sharon Lavigne, founder of the grassroots organization Rise St. James. For her work spearheading the fight to stop polluters in Cancer Alley, Lavigne is regarded as a figureheadOpens in a new tab of the environmental justice movement. Now, it appears that Landry’s suit could have a reverberating impactOpens in a new tab far from her hometown, as the EPA backs down from environmental justice cases across the country.

In Flint, Michigan, advocates say that Landry’s suit has already led to the collapse of their own chance at justice. This month, the EPA dropped a Houston case in the same way, without mandating any sweeping reforms. Attorneys told The Intercept they are concerned about the possibility of similarly disappointing outcomes in Detroit, St. Louis, eastern North Carolina, and elsewhere.

Experts say that the EPA appears to be shying away from certain Civil Rights Act investigations in states that are hostile to environmental justice, due to fears that Landry’s suit or similar efforts could make their way to the conservative Supreme Court. If that happened, the court appears ready to rule against the EPA — a verdict that could not only undermine the agency’s authority, but also significantly limit the ability of all federal agencies to enforce civil rights law.

“The lawsuit does not just challenge the EPA’s investigation and potential result of our complaint,” said Lisa Jordan, an attorney who helped file the Cancer Alley complaint. “It challenges the entire regulatory program.”

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